You Talkin' to Me?

I am not a big movie-goer, I admit it. If I have a chunk of two hours available, I usually don’t want to spend them in a cold, dark theater, especially with my obsessive popcorn-eating habit. For a while, I was refusing to go to a movie theater unless a guy asked me to go to one on a date, so as you can imagine, that was a dry-spell for me, movie-wise. I can’t watch movies that are scary, sad or violent, so that pretty much cuts everything out. So don’t ask me about Precious, or The Wrestler, or Million Dollar Baby because I’ve never seen them and probably never will. Of the movies, I have seen, however, my feeling is usually this: hated it! Here are the movies I like: The Natural, Dave, Heaven and Earth, Giant, Radio Flyer, Life is Beautiful, Murphy’s Romance, Jungle Fever, Household Saints, Once Around, Birdy, Eddie and the Cruisers, Fletch and My Chauffeur. I can’t think of any more.

What I can think of, however, are the movies I hate. Naturally, I hate the movies that you hate: the pretentious, the crass, the poorly acted, the poorly written and the self-conscious. If there is a big star playing the role of a cop gone bad, I probably hate it. If Jerry Bruckheimer is in any way affiliated with it, I hate it. Winona Ryder? Hate it. Sensitive homeless people? Oh my God, I hate it. Good Will Hunting? I’ve never seen it, but I can already tell that I’d hate it. With all this hate, as you can imagine, it must be hard to top the list. But these five have done it. So here you go: your Top 5 worst movies ever.

5. Crash/Traffic – Technically, these are two different movies. But I honestly don’t know what either one is about aside from being stupid as hell. In one of them, Catherine Zeta Jones makes giant statues out of cocaine, or maybe heroin. In one of them, Matt Damon grabs Thandie Newton’s hootch ‘cause he can. Somebody gets shot, but ridiculously doesn’t die, and Benicio Del Torro is hot. Both films are shot with a mock guerilla approach to give them a sense of reality, but reality my ass. These are both movies about how white-middle class people see the world. If you want to see some gritty shit about race, see Do the Right Thing. Not Sandra Bullock having a freakout because she’s coming to grips with the fact that she hates black people. Thank god she found that black guy in Blindside to make up for it.

4. Edward Scissorhands – Don’t pretend that you liked it either. Here’s how I recall this movie: Johnny Depp makes topiaries with his stabby hands, and everyone is alternately repulsed by him and enthralled with his artistry. First of all: there are worse things than scissorhands that are happening in this movie. Why did Johnny Depp have to wear so much makeup? He’s like one of those stupid goth kids who wear giant earlobe stretching earrings, sport a purple mohawk, pierce their cheek and then bitch about people always looking at them like they’re freaks. Mr. Scissorhands, stop wearing a leather unitard, and maybe you’ll feel a little more accepted. Don’t you know there are kids in Africa who don’t have hands at all? They’d LOVE to have scissors for hands. There are a lot of things to cut in Africa.

3. Pretty Woman – There’s so much wrong to this movie, but nothing wronger than the fact that women actually think this is romantic. To recap: Richard Gere wants a hooker. Julia Roberts is a hooker. By that alone, they probably both have a LOT of social diseases. Oh, but wait, Julia Roberts is awesome because she never lets men kiss her on the mouth. She just lets them put their indiscriminate ding dongs in her skanky-ass babymaker. And, by the way, he picked her up on a street corner. Do you know who stand on streetcorners? Crack hos. CRACK HOs. Why didn’t they just set this movie in the men’s restroom at the Waffle House? Dumb story, bad acting, Richard Gere’s ridiculous hair, snails, George Costanza…..it’s just awful.

2. Rainman – This movie would be so much more interesting if Raymond had scissorhands. But no, instead, we get MORE hookers and Tom Cruise. Newsflash: women are not prostitutes because they love sex. They’re not prostitutes because they are kindhearted, and want to help provide men with an escape from the pressures of their daily lives. Women are prostitutes because they need money for crack. CRACK! Tom Cruise sucks in this like he sucks in everything. Dustin Hoffman won the Academy Award for this movie, but I am highly convinced that this was a mere make-up for him not winning it for Tootsie. Ben Kingsley won that year for playing that stupid jerk, Ghandi. I don’t remember Christopher Cross writing a theme song for Ghandi.

1. Dances with Wolves – Here’s what I remember of this movie: Eldin from Murphy Brown was in it, but once he killed himself, the movie went downhill fast. I saw it in Manhattan with my sister, and before the movie we had wisely gone to a candy store and gotten a GIGANTIC bag of candy. I know we got a lot of gummi candy and giant lemon drops. For the last hour and a half of that movie, the only thing keeping me in that theater was that giant bag of candy. I have blocked the movie out of my mind because it was so awful, but I remember: scalping, Mary McDonnell wearing a stupid outfit, Kevin Costner being a bad actor, and some character named Wind In His Hair who was obviously the inspiration for Tyra Banks. Wait, I’m looking on IMDB right now: “Lt. John Dunbar befriends wolves and Indians, making him an intolerable aberration in the military.” This is another movie that would have vastly benefitted from scissorhands. Have you ever tried messing with someone with scissorhands? And a musket? Very difficult.
So, there you go. The five worst movies of all time. Just missing the cut: Titanic, Risky Business, Home Alone and Girl, Interrupted.